I have a horror of eating poisonous mushrooms. British television is particularly obsessed with depicting healthy young individuals at the height of their life going out and enjoying some rare mushrooms, and then quickly speeding forward to a prolonged study of them vomiting, being told that their kidneys are failing, skin blackening, eyes falling out, etc.
But here is a fungus that, once consumed, directs the unfortunate creature’s behaviour– it sends its prey (little ants in a nondescript jungle) up into a tree, commands them to sink their jaws into a leaf, AND THEN IT GROWS OUT OF THEIR BODY.
Better still, the BBC have time-elapse footage of the beautiful tapered fungi growing out of their victims:
i went to a editable wild mushroom workshop (sponsored by the government no less). the instructor said if you want to get into foraging for mushrooms, try to figure out “just how many maggots you are willing to eat.” 99.99% of the time, insects are already the mushroom by the time you find it.
typo:
already eating the mushroom, not just “already the mushroom”